Saturday, 17 November 2012

Rings of Saturn Controversy: Constructedness, Authenticity and Metal.

Recently while in Japan I read via Metal Sucks of a
flash in a pan controversy that brought quite a lot of social media attention
to Rings of Saturn’s new album Dingir.
The eye of the storm was around whether or not the band played at half speed
and then sped up the slow tempo recordings to match the desired BPM of the
overall composition. This had metal purists raging: “If you can’t play it live…”
and “Pro-tools/DAWs are such a crutch”. In my opinion the band’s response to
this controversy was somewhat less than optimum, they played the internet chat
room yell back in a loud voice and show outrage card. This for most of us who
have been on the net for a while equates to an admission of guilt. To me, the
truth of the controversy is less important than the questions it raises around
constructedness and authenticity in a post-album, post-label age of musical
consumption.

First of all, let me take you back to this post. Here I talked about metal
made by people who are not metal heads. That is, outsiders looking in. The
brief version is that metal created from outside positions runs a serious
authenticity risk: metal heads know their metal and they know if you are faking
it. Sometimes however, when the ingredients are just right, as is the case with
some of the aging djentlemen (Tesseract, Textures Vildhjarta), these products
are no longer a foreign form sounding similar to metal but rather a
sophisticated hybridisation which forces the genre into forms and directions
previously unknown and unimaginable. The linchpin of this experimentation is
technology. We can do now what was impossible. The same is true for what we see
and hear. It makes sense then that there is very much a possibility of
post-performance metal.

I use the term “post-performance” to refer a
burgeoning trend in which artists are rejecting the “play-you-ass-off-to-earn-peanuts-but-be-on-a-major-label”
paradigm. Ask any metal band these days how they make their money and the
answer will be “shows and merchandise”. The problem with this setup is that
without booking experience or a savvy agent, setting up a profitable run of
shows can be very difficult. Then there are unexpected disasters from the mild
(fuel prices go up, tour bus breaks down) to the wild (road accident, theft)
which can in a single event sink an operation running close to the break-even
mark.

Post-performance metal meanwhile adopts a different
logic. I came across this ideas after reading an interview with Dawnbringer’s Chris
Black on Invisible Oranges. Black
articulated an opinion quite at odds with the tour/merch trap outlined above. Due
to circumstances in his own life and personal preference, he chooses to eschew
touring and focus entirely on creating a memorable, high quality product.

As a child, music was to me something that you
experienced by radio, albums, or playing it yourself on an instrument. And that
usually meant experiencing it alone, so again, that’s just normal to me.

This is a man who literally is doing it all by
himself. He has created a fair relationship with the excellent ProfoundLore label and retains full control over his product.

Naturally there are exceptions such as Rise Above
Records who work hard to generate mystique primarily through performance. They
create supply and demand bottlenecks and have developed their brand to such an
extent that a new release is equivalent to a vinyl purchase.

So what does all of this have to do with Rings of
Saturn?

ROS, in spite of their youth, seem to be stuck in a
rather outdated metal mindset in which constructedness is a wholly negative
value and authenticity based on live performance (underground credibility) is
positive. Kind of like when straight dudes are called “gay” and go about
proving their hetero authenticity through displays of hyper masculinity (if
only they knew, huh?). ROS could have avoided this whole Metal Archives/ANUS trip
by taking a page from the djentleman’s textbook: DIY = constructedness and
attention to detail, a highly constructed end product holds value especially if
it has riffs, leads and ideas that shred. By refusing to position themselves
within the crippling discourse of pre-Twenty-first century metal authenticity they
would be able to exceed expectations and concentrate energies on perfecting
their sound and bringing innovation to metal from unexpected directions.